


find me

by MusicWritesMyLife



Series: of law and chaos [1]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Bodhi is so good and pure and maybe a little bit of a matchmaker, Cassian is LITERALLY A BALL OF FEELS PROTECT HIM PLEASE, Cassian is too old for all this shit, Elevator Sex, F/M, FBI AU, Han Solo is a little shit, Human K-2SO, Jyn and Cassian are stuck in an elevator, Jyn has so much trouble talking about feelings, Rebel Captain Secret Valentine 2017, Rebelcaptain - Freeform, Smut, So much angst, mentions of spies, sassmaster Leia Organa
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-14
Updated: 2017-02-14
Packaged: 2018-09-18 09:24:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,356
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9378389
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MusicWritesMyLife/pseuds/MusicWritesMyLife
Summary: Everyone’s going to think they had sex in the elevator.His colleagues are never going to shut up about this. Han will be smirking, and Leia will make sly jokes and Bodhi—Bodhi will be the worse because he knows the whole story, apparently.The FBI’s finest, his colleagues.Eight years after Jyn walks out of Cassian's life, they meet again in an elevator. Cassian can handle the thirty seconds, maybe a minute, until they get to the ground floor. If he closes his eyes tight enough, he can pretend she's not even there.So, of course, the elevator has to break down.(Or: the one where Jyn and Cassian have to hash out eight years of angst and UST in an elevator.)





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is a gift for the lovely [Maggie](http://www.fitzsimmmonsy.tumblr.com) as part of the RebelCaptain Secret Valentine. I have to thank her for the amazing prompt which spawned two days of frantic keyboard mashing and provided me with much catharsis after the stress of my biochemistry exam: _“Looks like we’ll be trapped for a while…”_. I have never written a "trapped in an elevator" AU or an FBI AU or elevator sex, but all three have been on my writing bucket list for a while so thank you for giving me a chance to do them all at once. 
> 
> (Also, you're just a really lovely human being.)
> 
> As usual, this is SUPER angsty, because I can't seem to write anything else for these two, but there is a happy ending, and, of course, smut!
> 
> My grasp of Spanish is extremely limited and I may have taken some liberty with some of the curses (Cassian has a very foul mouth); any and all mistakes are mine.

_i know your love is come haunting me_

_like a river always running_

_i keep losing you_

_like a fire always burning_

_i’ll be here for you_

.

.

.

The day that Cassian gets stuck in the elevator with Jyn is probably top five on the list of worst days of his life.

(Incidentally, it will also be top five on the list of best days of his life, but he doesn’t know that yet.)

He’s been on his feet for over thirty-six hours, running a two-day surveillance operation on a sting only to find out thirty-five hours in that the so-called source Han was so sure would come through had fed them the wrong information and that he’s spent the last two days sitting outside the home of an elderly couple who were visiting their daughter in Florida. And of course, as if the day couldn’t get any worse, he made it all the way back to the office to be informed by a smug Leia Skywalker that Special Agent Draven had gone home for the evening and wouldn’t hear his report until tomorrow morning. (Not that there’s anything to report, since the whole thing was an absolute _cock up_.)

He staggers into the elevator, rubbing his eyes because his brain is now catching on to the fact that he’s been sustained for the last two days on bad coffee and stale bread. He needs to shower, shave, sleep for at least eight hours, and eat some proper food before he’ll feel even remotely human again, but the chances of all four of those things happening in the next twelve hours is almost zero. (You’d think they’d give him some time off after this astronomical disaster, but no, it’s back to work as normal and Solo, the bastard, probably won’t get more than a slap on the wrist.)

 _The odds of success are less than one percent_ , Kay would say.

He’s going to fucking _murder_ Han Solo is what he’s going to do. He’s going to wrap his hands around the bastard’s neck and strangle the _life_ out of him—

“Hold the elevator!” someone shouts. Cassian doesn’t, in part because he’s a bit of an asshole (so he’s been told), but mostly because he’s so exhausted suddenly that keeping his eyes open is enough of a challenge without having to make awkward small talk with someone else. He really just wants to close his eyes and enjoy the ten-floor ride to the parking lot in peace.

Of course, because this is the worst day of his life, an arm snakes between the doors just in time, and in tumbles a mess of pink cotton blouse and grey woollen trousers and heels that look like they could also double as small knives.

(Cassian will say afterwards that’s why he didn’t recognise her right away—because Jyn wore almost exclusively jeans and t-shirts, because Jyn used to steal his hoodies even though they swam comically large on her small frame, because she would never be caught dead in something that wasn’t some variation on _comfortable_ and _practical_ —but really, he should have known as soon as he heard the voice. British accents aren’t all that common in the FBI’s LA field office.)

There’s a moment before it clicks, a moment where they survey one another, where they’re just two tired people in an elevator, aching to get off and go about their lives. The woman lets her bag slide to the floor and presses the button for the ground floor with a long exhale that sounds almost painful. It seems, he thinks, as he watches her bangs flutter through hooded eyes, he’s not the only one having a shit day.

Then she turns, pushing her hair back from her face, and her eyes are so _green_ and, suddenly, Cassian is wide awake.

“ _Jyn_.”

Her name slips out of his mouth before he can stop it—a prayer, perhaps, or a curse. She must be a dream, he thinks, a mirage his brain is projecting onto the face of whatever dark-haired woman is actually riding the elevator, because there is no way that Jyn Erso, who has haunted his dreams for the last eight years, is standing in front of him now. For all he knows, Jyn Erso is dead—she might as well be, for all he cares.

(He tells himself as much because it hurts less than the alternative—that he cares too much, that he still wakes in the morning and reaches for her, eight years later.)The colour drains slowly out of her face. Her eyes are so wide and so green and it might be funny if it weren’t the worst of Cassian’s nightmares come to life. Jyn Erso carved the heart out of him, eviscerated him, and he doesn’t think he can stomach it again.

(It’s unfair, he thinks, that she’s still every bit as beautiful as she was then.)

“Cassian,” she whispers.

The elevator judders to a halt.

* * *

They met in college. He was in his fourth year. She was in her first. They met at the student union: she applied for a job at the coffee shop and he was the one to interview her.

(Kay told him that he was wasting his time with romance on a girl like Jyn. Kay said he was only going to get hurt, but that if he was determined to go along with this ridiculous plan, Kay would help him—if only so that he’d have someone to resuscitate him when she broke his heart.)

(Kay always had a way with words.)

* * *

She’s forgotten how good Cassian is at keeping quiet.

It used to infuriate her when they were together, the way he would clam whenever she got angry, letting her rant and rage while he just stood there, arms folded across his chest, face totally blank.

He wasn’t quite so good at it then, she realises. Now, after who-knows how many years with the FBI, he’s got it down to a science: leaning against the elevator wall, arms folded across his chest, eyes closed, he could be asleep.

(He might be. He looks exhausted.)

He’s so patient. She’s never been able to understand it, never been able to wrap her head around how he can sit quietly for so many hours, how he can just _wait_ , but she’s always been one to act first and think later. _Wait_ has never really been in her vocabulary.

Jyn scuffs the toe of her boot against the floor. “Looks like we’ll be trapped for a while I guess,” she says quietly. It’s been twenty minutes at least since the elevator stopped moving and no one has called to update them on the situation. Cassian called someone right away, a terse, clipped conversation that she did her best not to listen to (though it was impossible to ignore the muttered curses and the desperate _just pick up the fucking phone, Leia, and tell someone that we’re stuck in an elevator. Yes, there’s two of us. Just fucking do it, Leia_ ), but they haven’t heard anything since then. Maybe Leia didn’t pass the message on.

(Jyn doesn’t really want to think too much about Cassian’s relationship with Leia Skywalker. She doesn’t know much about the young agent, other than that she’s young and beautiful and a firecracker. They’re probably just colleagues, and it’s not like she has a right to care anymore anyways, but Leia reminds her a little bit too much of her college self and the thought of Cassian being with someone else, being with anyone, really, bothers her. She’s always been a little selfish.)

Cassian casts his eyes skyward and mutters a long string of Spanish that probably isn’t polite. 

It stings, a little. She wishes she could be anywhere but here, too, but she’s not making it obvious. Then again, she’s not the one who ended a year-long relationship with no warning and for all intents and purposes vanished off the face of the earth, either, so she supposes he’s entitled to a little more bitterness.

“So.” She chews her bottom lip, scrambling for something, anything, to say that will fill the sucking void between them. What do you say after eight years? _I’m sorry_ , probably, but somehow she doesn’t think that’s going to help matters very much. It’s a bit too little, too late.

Cassian’s eyes are closed again; either he really is trying to sleep or he’s hoping that she’ll shut up. It’s probably both in equal measure, but she _hates_ sitting still and doing nothing, hates silences that never end or sentences that trail off unfinished, so she pushes on.

“You’re an agent, then. Erm, congratulations.”

He sighs, a long, low whistle of air between his teeth. “Yeah.” It’s gritted, reluctant, like she’s dragging it through his teeth.

She knows he wants to say more, can see it in the conflict shining in his eyes. He wants to ask her what she’s doing here, probably, or why the hell she just _left_ without any notice, as if the year they shared together didn’t mean anything, as if _living together_ didn’t mean anything (it did, it meant so much more than she ever thought anything would), but he doesn’t want to talk to her either, she thinks. He wants to wait out this ride in silence, make her suffer for what she’s done, but they’re not going anywhere, not anytime soon, and his curiosity will get the better of him eventually. It always does.

She takes the time to study his profile. He’s different from how she remembers him—still just as handsome, but older. Rougher. More tired. The beard is new, thin enough that he obviously keeps it trimmed, but a little ragged and overgrown, like he hasn’t shaved in a while. There are shadows under his eyes that were never there before, deep, dark circles that remind her of long nights in prison, counting the ceiling tiles and wondering how on earth she ended up with a life like this. His hair is shorter, a little better trimmed, but still too long in the front. She used to think it was adorable, the way it always fell in his eyes.

(It’s sexy, now. The way he could look at her, up from under his hair with those dark eyes makes the pit of her stomach clench.)

She can tell the exact moment he gives in because he pinches the bridge of his nose tightly and lets out a sharp exhale.

“What are you doing here?” he asks quietly. He’s aiming for calm, expressionless, but cold fury bleeds underneath his words. She can’t blame him; he seems to have gotten his life together, moved on and become successful and now here she is, dredging up the past he put behind him again.

“Working,” she replies coolly, looking him right in the eye. It’s so incredibly awkward and she wants to stumble over her words and look away, do anything to avoid the accusation in his eyes, but she’s been carrying the shame of what she did with her for long enough and she’s always been a little too self-destructive for her own good. Cassian already hates her for what she did; seeming penitent is only going to make it worse.

(It might make him _care_ and she’s hurt him too much already for that.)

“Contract work,” she elaborates when he glares at her. “A friend put me in touch.”

“Friend,” he repeats scornfully, like he can’t believe she has those. She doesn’t, really—she has Bodhi. They’ve known each other since they were little, thrown together in one of the dozen foster homes she stayed in before Saw finally took her in. He’s the closest thing she has to family now: a couch she can always crash on, a number she can always call. No matter how bad it gets, Bodhi’s there. Bodhi’s always been there. 

(Cassian probably would have always been there, too, if she’d let him.)

“Yeah.” She squares her shoulders defiantly. “Bodhi Rook. He’s a tech.” He’s a hacker, actually, but he says the Bureau doesn’t like to call it that. Something about it not being official enough.

Cassian swears under his breath and it occurs to Jyn that he probably knows Bodhi, that they probably work together. Bodhi knows about what happened between her and Cassian—as much as she could tell him, anyway—and she can’t help wondering if part of his insistence that she take this job wasn’t because he figured she’d run into Cassian again.

“You’re Old Ben’s source?”

He looks surprised, but she can’t blame him; there are lots of things he doesn’t know about her.

“Yeah. Bodhi brought me in while I was in prison.”

“ _Prison_?”

She’s shooting herself in the foot, shattering the perfect image of the fiery girl he fell in love with in college, but it’s better, she tells herself, safer, this way. She decided eight years ago what she would do if she ever ran into Cassian again and it’s for his own good that she stick to it. She’s too dangerous. “They reduced my sentence. Cut me a deal if I cooperated.”

Cassian scrubs a hand over his face wearily. He seems to have aged ten years in the last few minutes, but that’s maybe because she remembers him being so alive, so passionate about life and other people and doing _the right thing_. Life has stomped that out of him somewhere along the way, and she probably has a lot to do with it. “Christ,” he mutters.

He’s judging her, she figures. Realising that she’s not who he thought she was, that it’s probably better that she left him.

She swallows the lump rising in her throat. This is what she wanted. This is what’s best.

(Maybe, if she tells herself enough, it’ll be true.)

* * *

She didn’t want to date him. She didn’t want to date anyone in college—ever, maybe. Honestly, at that point in her life, she was surprised to still be alive, let alone starting college, _let alone_ have a boyfriend. But Cassian—Cassian wormed his way into her heart so well that she didn’t even know he was there until it was too late to push him out.

It was slow. Subtle. He was good at that. He was good at the romance too, the sweeping declarations that knocked Jyn off her feet and made her feel a little bad about being so cynical, but the stuff that really got her was the little things: his hand on the small of her back when they went through a crowd; the way he stood just too close to her in line at Starbucks, close enough that she could feel the air between them crackling like a live wire; the way he stopped asking for her coffee order because he knew it by heart.

He paid attention to the details, the little things that didn’t matter to anyone. He noted them, and filed them away for further use.

To someone like Jyn, who didn’t have anyone to worry about the little things, that was a big deal.

* * *

Despite his best intentions, Cassian has thought a lot about what would happen if he ever met Jyn again. He’s imagined their meeting hundreds of times, usually as he paces his tiny living room to ward off insomnia, or as he’s killing time on an overnight stakeout, but of course, reality is nothing like the imagination.

This is how he thought things might go: she’d reach out to him. Nothing fancy—a line in an email, maybe—just something to indicate that she was thinking of him, that she wanted to reconnect. That she was _sorry_. They’d meet somewhere—a coffee shop, perhaps—and he’d seriously consider not going, just sticking it to her, hurting her the way she hurt him all those years ago, but he’d go, if not to satisfy his own curiosity then because there’s still a part of him that loves her, a part of him that’s been dreaming of this for years. He’s never really fallen out of love with Jyn Erso, just learned to live with the void she left behind. She’d look the same, but different; older, maybe, more worn, but under the contrition, there’d be that same fire, that spite, that he fell in love with when she came in for that stupid interview.

(He wasn’t even supposed to do that interview, but the supervisor was sick and Cassian was the most senior employee. He’s cursed that supervisor ever since.)

This is how it goes: they meet in an elevator. She looks the same, only harder, warier. He doesn’t see the spark anymore; what he sees is resignation, fatigue, like she wants to get off whatever path she’s trapped on but can’t figure out how. Her clothes are cool, professional, meant to blend in, but the tan messenger bag on her shoulder is old and frayed. The brief display of sentimentality is at odds with the image she’s trying to project, but Jyn has always been a little bit of a contradiction.

(It’s _his,_ he realises after a moment; she stole it from him when they first started dating, with a smile and a glib comment about how he had much better taste in bags. She bought him a replacement for his birthday, despite all her claims about not caring and not being good at relationships. It was dark leather, practical and masculine and a bit like Indiana Jones. He still uses it.)

The air between them is charged with eight years of unshared feelings and repressed hurt. Neither of them want to look the other in the eye. It’s awkward and painful to be confined in such a small space with her so close and know that this wasn’t planned, that she doesn’t want to be here anymore than he does.

(Well. At least he can abandon the dream that she’s going to reach out to him.)

Jyn is sitting on the floor now; she slid down the wall about half an hour ago and hasn’t moved since then. She twists the strap of her messenger bag between her fingers. He remembers that she likes to fiddle while she’s thinking; she used to drive him crazy tapping tabletops or clicking pens while they studied. She used to have a pen stuck in her hair all the time, bisecting her ponytail; she’d pull it out and twist it between her fingers whenever work was slow. He told her once that she should be a surgeon with manual dexterity like that; she laughed, but there was something in her eyes, something sad and wistful. (Looking back, it was probably a sign. There are hundreds of them scattered in his memories, signposts that heralded her impending departure.) He’s still standing, even though is feet are aching and his back is starting to complain, because he can watch Jyn from above without being noticed. He doesn’t want to be looking at her, he shouldn’t be looking at her, but he’s little bit like a starving man stuck in the desert and she’s the oasis he’s been dreaming of.

Who knows how many hours they’ll be stuck here. Who knows when he’ll see her again—if ever. Call him a masochist, but he’s not going to waste what little time they have.

“Fuck it,” Jyn mutters suddenly. Cassian starts and looks away; she hasn’t looked up at him, but she’s getting to her feet, and he feels like he’s been caught staring. She flips her bag opens, starts rifling through it. Out of the corner of his eye, Cassian can see it’s brimming with odds and ends: a notebook, half the pages falling out; a battered Blackberry with at least three keys missing and a crack bisecting the screen; crumpled Starbucks bags and half-eaten packets of chips. It’s like she’s preparing for an apocalypse, like she needs to be ready to run at any minute, but it’s always been like that.

(Another sign he should have seen.)

“I need to get out of these,” she mumbles, half to herself, as she pulls a pair of worn black jeans out of the bottom of her bag. (Cassian never thought the bag was that big, but Jyn’s always been good at economising on space.) A white t-shirt follows.

“You have clothes in your bag?” He shouldn’t be surprised; isn’t, really. Jyn was the kind of girl who never came prepared for anything, unless her personal comfort was on the line: Converse shoved into her purse at university galas, sports bras in the pocket of her coat at job interviews.

(He was shocked the first time he met her, at that interview he hates to remember but can’t seem to forget, when she reached into the pocket of her coat, a green duffel coat that looked like it had been worn through one too many winters, and pulled out a crumpled sports bra. “I’m gonna change,” she said at the look on his face. “Underwire is _so_ uncomfortable.”)

“Uh, yeah.” Heat spreads across her cheeks and Cassian has to look away. He’s not going down this path. He promised himself eight years ago he wouldn’t, but he’s always been bad at keeping promises to himself and being with her in person makes it so much harder. “I figured I’d change downstairs in the bathroom, you know, but since we’re stuck here…”

“Right.”

Everyone’s going to think they had sex in the elevator.

His colleagues are never going to shut up about this. Han will be smirking, and Leia will make sly jokes and _Bodhi_ —Bodhi will be the worst because he knows the whole story, apparently.

The FBI’s finest, his colleagues.

She glances at him, suddenly concerned. “You don’t mind, do you?”

Cassian sighs, scrubbing a hand over his face. The last time he saw Jyn, she was naked and curled in his arms, still reeking of sweat and sex and _Jyn_ , and she’s asking him if he _minds_ if she changes in front of him. In an elevator. That they’ve been stuck in for hours.

_Por el amor de Dios._

They don’t pay him enough for this.

“I don’t care,” he says finally, wearily. “Do what you want.”

He does care, maddeningly; he cares more than he should, no matter what he tells himself, no matter how many times he promises himself that he’s over her, that it doesn’t matter.

Eight years is a long time to grieve, and yet, he can’t seem to move on.

“Okay.” It comes out in a long exhale, almost relieved. He wonders what she would have done if he had said he minded. He wonders if she thought he was going to say no. She should know that he’s never been able to refuse her anything.

He turns away under the pretence of giving her privacy, but it’s really to protect himself: if he sees her, if he glimpses the bare expanses of white skin that haunt his dreams, he’ll be done for. He’s barely going to survive all of this as it is.

He closes his eyes, leans his head against the cool steel of the elevator walls and listens to the rustling of clothes, wondering what he’s done in his life to deserve this mess. Caring too much, probably. Kay has always said he’s too careless with his heart, that wearing it on his sleeve in a ruthless, materialistic society like their’s is asking for trouble, but he’s never believed it. He likes to think—he _hopes_ —that there’s a place in this world for people like him, that romance isn’t completely dead. He likes to believe people have hearts, underneath it all.

For all the good it’s done him.

The rustling has stopped, and Cassian opens his eyes. He’s forgotten, of course, that the wall opposite him is a mirror, and the image reflected into it is Jyn, barefoot and dressed only in her tight black jeans and a black bra, the soft, wireless kind that have become so popular, all lace and satin trimmings. He can see the outline of her nipples pebbled under the fabric, has a full view of the long, white expanse of her stomach, the dip of her navel that he used to map with his tongue.

 _Carajo de puta madre_.

Jyn looks up in that moment—of course she does—about to lift her t-shirt over her head. Their eyes meet in the mirror. Cassian swallows because his throat is suddenly too tight, it’s too hot, like all the air has been sucked out of here. There’s something in her eyes, something dark and maybe a little scared, that reminds him of the first time he took her home, the first time they slept together. It was like she wanted this, but was terrified of what would happen if she did.

“I— Um—” Cassian combs a hand through his hair, rapidly, eyes flickering towards the floor. He doesn’t dare close them now; not when Jyn’s half-naked body is burned on the back of his eyelids.

When he looks up again, an eternity later, her shirt is on and the work clothes have been stowed her bag. She’s still not wearing shoes, just socks. He can see the shadow of her bra—if it can even be called a bra, that flimsy thing—through her shirt.

He checks his phone again, even though he knows there’s no messages; it gives him something to look at that isn’t Jyn because now that she looks like _Jyn_ again he’s finding it harder to ignore the itch under his skin. If he gives in, if he reaches out and touches her like he so desperately wants to, it’s over. He’ll lose himself completely in her again and he owes it to himself to be stronger.

Jyn scratches the back of her neck in an unusual display of self-consciousness. She isn’t looking at him anymore, staring instead at her toes, shoulders hunched, but Cassian would be a fool to think she isn’t thinking the same as he is. The tension in the air is palpable; the whole elevator reeks of desire.

Release cannot come soon enough.

* * *

He doesn’t really know when he fell in love with her. He liked her, he was enamoured with her, in awe of her, and then suddenly, she became the centre of his world, the reason for her existence. He didn’t realise that he was past the point of no return until it was miles behind him, a tiny island in the distance.

* * *

Cassian sits down about two hours in. Jyn’s surprised he lasted that long, honestly, because her feet are killing her and she sat down in the first half hour, but he’s always been stubborn. More importantly, he’s always been good at hiding his pain.

(Maybe that’s why she’s so surprised to see it written on his face.)

( _Or maybe_ , the traitorous voice in her head whispers, _you messed him up so badly he doesn’t know how to cope with it._ )

The elevator is a mess. Cassian’s jacket is discarded on the ground near her boots, peeled off an hour ago. His shirt is half unbuttoned, sleeves rolled past the elbows, because it’s hot as _sin_ in here, and it takes everything Jyn has to keep from staring at all of the skin he’s exposed, or the way the sweat gathers just under his hairline. There’s an empty packet of M &Ms on the ground that Jyn dug out of her bag. Cassian ate most of them; Jyn pretended not to be hungry because she knew he wouldn’t take them otherwise. She forgot that he ate them in order of colour preference, starting with brown and ending with red. She’s chewed her way through three packages of Starbursts, so sweet they make her teeth ache, and checked her phone every ten minutes until it died. The only message she had was a text from Bodhi, telling her he was going to order Chinese tonight and she could come over if she wanted. Her phone died before she could think of a reply.

(He probably knows what’s happened to her by now anyways.)

Cassian’s phone buzzes softly. He glances at it, curses softly, and shoves it back in his pocket. “Leia,” he mutters when he catches her looking at him, questions written all over her face. “Fire department’s on their way but there’s traffic. Might be a few hours yet.”

“Mm.” Jyn rolls her bottom lip between her teeth. “She’s pretty.”

She shouldn’t say it, knows from the way that his shoulders stiffen and his expression pinches that she should have just said nothing, but they’ve been in here for hours and there’s too much in the air between them and he keeps _looking_ at her like he’s Eve and she’s the forbidden fruit, and she can’t take it anymore.

“Jyn,” he says, sharp and tired all at once, and this, _this,_ is familiar, this is just like every other argument they had while they were dating: her raging off at some little thing and him sighing and trying to push her away before she could goad him into snapping back. “Don’t do this.”

“Do what?” she snaps. “It’s an observation.”

“It’s a fucking _landmine_ is what it is and I’m not stepping on it.”

“Right.” Her cheeks are burning hot, and she presses the back of her hand against them reflexively. “How could I forget. Cassian Andor, so high and fucking mighty. I’m surprised they haven’t sainted you yet.”

It’s a low blow, a sharp dig, and it gets to him because his eyes darken and he inhales sharply, but he doesn’t take the bait.

“No,” he says quietly, firmly. “You don’t get to do this, Jyn.” She can hear the cold fire simmering underneath his words and she knows he’s on the verge of losing it. “You don’t get to come back here after eight years and turn this back on _me_. _You_ left.”

There it is, she thinks. The wound that she left, that he’s let fester under the surface for years, is rising to the surface.

Seeing it hurts more than she expected.

(She’d realised what she’d done when they took her. He always wore his heart on his sleeve—still does, even now, though he’s better at hiding it—and even though she told herself he was going to be okay, it was only because it made it easier to live with herself. She didn’t believe it for a second.)

“I—”

“You didn’t even leave a _note_ , Jyn. I woke up and you were gone and I never heard from you again. You _disconnected your fucking number_.”

She’s forgotten how his accent gets thicker when he’s angry; the words tumble out of his mouth in a blur, one on top of the other.

“I don’t do this!” She’s almost shouting now, the lump in her throat growing uncomfortably large because he’s so close and he’s so beautiful and the only reason he isn’t _hers_ is because she can’t tell him the _truth_. She didn’t disconnect her number, the CIA did because they were afraid it would be traced. She wanted to call Cassian when she got on her feet again, but his number had been on her old phone and she was too nervous to look him up in the phone book. He wasn’t the kind of guy who waited around, he was the kind of guy who would move on and give his heart to someone else, and she couldn’t watch him smile at some other woman the way he used to smile at her.

Cassian folds his arms across his chest, expression inscrutable. She hates when he does this, hates that he retreats in on himself like this, how he forces her to work through her problems instead of putting words in her mouth that she can deflect.

(He does it probably because he cares, but it just makes her want to scream.)

“You know”—she gestures wildly, searching for something, anything that will make him _say something_ —“relationships.”

One eyebrow rises slowly. “Real human connection, you mean.”

The way he says it, like there’s something wrong with her, makes the pit of her stomach clench with white-hot rage. People don’t need connection in their lives; in fact, they’d be a lot better off without it, a lot less hurt without it. She knows this. She’s learned the hard way.

(She’s learned the harder way that real connection leaves you with a void that’s impossible to fill when you turn your back on it, which is a hundred times worse than being without.)

“No,” she says even though it’s exactly what she means.

“Well, what is it then?” he snaps. “You just want to sell yourself out to the highest bidder because you think it’s safer? You just want to sleep with whomever catches your fancy regardless of what kind of damage you leave behind? Has it occurred to you that your actions have repercussions on someone other than yourself?”

It has. It did when she slipped out of Cassian’s apartment on a cold morning in January. It does now, staring at his face, so angry and hurt and disappointed.

_I gave you my heart. I trusted you with it. I thought you’d have the decency to at least give it back to me in one piece._

Cassian sighs wearily. He doesn’t look quite so ferocious anymore, just tired. “Caring isn’t a weakness, Jyn.”

She swallows, fiddling with the hem of her shirt. It feels like she’s teetering on the edge of a precipice, waiting for the wind to push her in one direction or the other. “I know that now,” she says softly.

She was so afraid that he would let her down, that he would break her like her parents or Saw did, that she broke him.

* * *

He didn’t realise she was gone at first. He thought, when he woke up and reached for her only to find a bare mattress, that she was making coffee, or in the shower, or reading in his living room. He’d gotten so comfortable, so used to having her around, that it never occurred to her that she would leave.

It took almost a year, but in the end, Kay was right after all.

* * *

_Caring isn’t a weakness, Jyn._

_I know that now._

Cassian pushes a hand through his hair. This is too much. She says it like she means it, soft and hesitant, staring fixedly at the hole worn in one knee, and yet—

“Were you ever going to do anything?” He doesn’t want to ask, but he needs to know. “If we hadn’t run into each other today—”

He doesn’t need to finish. The answer is written all over her face in the way that her brows pinch and she pulls her bottom lip between her teeth and she won’t meet his eyes. Cassian closes his eyes and lets his head fall back against the wall. He isn’t surprised. He doesn’t know why he even thought this would change anything, doesn’t know why he bothered hoping at all because Jyn hasn’t changed, she was never going to change, and all he’s doing is tearing his open the barely-scabbed wounds on his heart all over again.

(Too much scar tissue can lead to a heart attack, Kay told him once.)

“I wanted to come back,” she says. Her voice is barely more than a whisper, which is maybe why Cassian’s first instinct is to think that this is a dream. Maybe Jyn was never here to begin with; maybe this is all an elaborate hallucination produced from sleep deprivation and self-deprecation and too much caffeine. (It wouldn’t be the first time he’s conjured her up.)

Maybe she thinks he keeps silent because he doesn’t believe her, maybe she just needs to get this off her chest, maybe she’s not real, because she says: “I got halfway back to your flat—” He’s forgotten that she calls it that, a flat not an apartment, because that’s the English way to do things and she was born English even though she’s been living in America since she was little. “—when they grabbed me.”

He can’t not react to this, because it sounds a little too much like something from a spy movie. “They _grabbed you_?” She said she’d been in prison, but he figured she was arrested for something petty, like shoplifting maybe, or vandalism (it’s the kind of thing Jyn would have done, full of passion and fire, and disregard for the law when it didn’t suit her purposes). He hadn’t figured it would be something serious—was she in a gang? Drugs? _Murder_?

“I—” Jyn blushes, picking at the frayed knee of her jeans. “It’s not what you think.”

“Tell me,” he mutters between gritted teeth because if this is some kind of excuse, some exaggerated joke, he’s going to lose it, “what exactly am I _supposed_ to think?”

Jyn sighs, painfully, like she’s spent her whole life avoiding whatever it is she’s about to tell him. “My father was—is, I suppose—a nuclear physicist. I haven’t seen him in seventeen years, but he’s apparently very good at what he does because the Empire murdered my mother and kidnapped him when I was eight."

Cassian sucks in a breath. He’s heard about the Empire; nothing substantial, just snatches, hushed whispers in the hallways and in the line for the coffee cart outside about a global criminal organisation. Supposedly, they’re the reason Old Ben left the CIA and came to the Feds—something about Ben’s partner being killed by a super assassin named Vader. They’re known for their ruthless asset acquisition; it doesn’t surprise him in the slightest that they would murder and kidnap to get an expert nuclear physicist in their pocket.

(It explains some things, the voice of hope that he’s been trying to ignore for the last eight years whispers. It would explain why she never talked about her family. It would explain why she felt the need to run in the first place, why she always seemed like she had one foot out the door.)

“Jyn—”

“No.” Her hands clench into fists, knuckles straining under bone-white skin. “I need to— Just let me finish, okay?”

And there she is again: the stubborn, fierce girl he’s always loved, who never needed anyone’s protection or pity.

“I don’t remember much about that night, really—” That is a lie; Cassian can see it written all over her face—she remembers everything. “—but they bounced me around a lot after anyways, just to be safe. I think I had eight different foster families in the first year. That’s where I met Bodhi, actually—we were in the same foster home for a bit. I wasn’t supposed to keep in touch with anyone—they gave me different aliases for each family—but Bodhi’s good with computers, you know, so he found a way.” She smiles sadly. “We had a secret code. Like spies.

“Saw pulled me out when I was ten. He knew my parents, he said, and he figured they wouldn’t have wanted me to waste away in protective custody, so he broke me out. The CIA was pissed about it, but they obviously were either really incompetent or figured that I was just as safe with him, because they didn’t find me.

“I stayed with Saw for seven years. He wasn’t like a father—he’s never been good with affection, he’s too paranoid to really care about people—but he took care of me and he taught me things and I was _safe_. I felt that way, anyways,” she says bitterly and Cassian’s heart clenches, because obviously this story isn’t going to end well.

(He remembers how Jyn was when they first met, all tough exteriors and mile-high walls, how her dorm room was cold and clinical—some clothes shoved into the wardrobe, toiletries in the bathroom, the rest of it empty—as opposed to all the other girls on the floor, whose rooms were overflowing with photos and throw pillows and memories of the friends and family they left behind.)

“Obviously, Saw didn’t think so because he ditched me in a trailer in Riverside with sixty bucks and 9mm. I pawned the gun, which was enough to get me a bus ticket to San Diego. Bodhi let me crash on his couch for a week until I could get a job, and then I saved up money to go to college. I didn’t figure I would make it that far, but it was nice to have a goal.”

Cassian bites the inside of his cheek until he tastes blood to keep from saying what he thinks of Saw Gerrera (it can’t be anyone else; it isn’t like the name is common) because what kind of idiot leaves a teenaged girl who’s possibly wanted by an international terrorist organisation _on her own_?

“But I guess the Empire wasn’t really that interested in me anymore, because I made it to UCLA the next year and, well…” She trails off, blushing. “You know the story from there.”

“So,” he says slowly, voice trembling with barely suppressed rage at Saw and the Empire and the government for spectacularly fucking all of this up and letting Jyn be _collateral_ in their attempts to cover their own asses, “when you left—”

“The CIA picked me up,” she says and he breathes a tiny sigh of relief because he doesn’t want to think about what would have happened if it had been the Empire. She wouldn’t be talking to him, probably. “Apparently, they’d gotten news that Empire was trying to build some kind of advanced weapons project but that my father was digging his heels in and they thought that the Empire was going to try and pick me up as an incentive. That’s what they told me, anyways—” She shrugs. “—but I’m pretty sure they were hoping to use me as bait.”

“Hoping?”

“I escaped.”

She says it nonchalantly, like escaping CIA custody isn’t a feat in and of itself.

“Right,” he says slowly. Of course she did. She probably asked her handlers for their Starbucks orders on her way out, too.

“I was on the run for a while, until I ended up in prison and Bodhi got me the deal with the Feds. The point is—” She takes a deep breath, combs a hand through her hair. He’s surprised to see her eyes are shining with tears. “I, um, I was coming back. And maybe I should have kept in touch, maybe I should have tried harder, but they were probably watching your house and I just didn’t want to go back in that _cage_ again, and I was scared—”

“ _Jyn_.”

His voice is raw, and when she turns to him, eyes wide like a deer in the headlights, he sees that same rawness in her face, like every one of those emotions she fights so hard to keep locked away have risen to the surface. Like she’s letting him in.

He doesn’t know who moves first; they surge together like stars on a collision course and meet in a clash of lips and teeth and tongue. It’s ugly; it’s eight years of hurt and bitterness and anger shoved between them. Cassian tastes blood in his mouth; his or Jyn’s he isn’t sure.

He pulls back first because his heart is starting to crack and he’s in danger of losing himself if he goes any further. “Jyn,” he whispers. She presses her forehead against his, her skin surprisingly cool in the damp heat of the elevator. “I can’t— I can’t do this. Not again.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” she says. Her voice is hardly more than a whisper but it’s fierce; she grabs both of his hands in hers and clings to them. “I’m tired of running. I—” Her breath catches. “I’m home.”

(She told him once, when they first started dating, that she wasn’t used to people sticking around. _Welcome home_ , he said, and she smiled one of those rare, real smiles that made his heart swell painfully in his chest.)

Maybe that’s what does it, or maybe it’s the fact that she’s _here_ and she’s _real_ and this is everything he’s been dreaming of for the last eight years; he doesn’t really care why, all that matters is that he’s starving and Jyn is the oxygen he would kill to breathe. There’s a voice in the back of his mind, one that sounds disturbingly like Kay, whispering that this is a terrible idea, that it’s only going to end in heartbreak and he barely survived it the first time so how is he going to survive it again, until Jyn’s tongue slips into his mouth (he’d forgotten how she does that, quickly, silently, how it catches him by surprise every time) and he isn’t thinking about much of anything.

It’s awkward: they’re seated facing on another against the wall, Jyn has all but climbed into Cassian’s lap, and he’s waging war with himself as to whether he should use his hands to keep himself balanced or touch every inch of her skin. (One option is obviously more appealing, but the other is going to keep him from falling over.) What he really wants to do is just give in, lie back and let Jyn crawl all over him the way she used to when they were in college, but the truth is that his back is beyond sore after living in his car for two days and if he lies down on this floor (any floor, really) he isn’t getting back up again for a long time.

They are going to fix this elevator eventually, and he doesn’t want to explain to his colleagues why he’s lying half-dead on the floor when they do.

“Jyn,” he mutters against her lips, torturously because she’s trying to bite her way back into his mouth again and he really wants to let her. “ _Cariño_. We have to get up.”

She ignores him.

“Come on.” He catches her wrist as she pushes at the edges of his shirt restlessly. “My back can’t take this.”

She pulls away then, grinning, and _joder_ , if it doesn’t make his heart stutter. “What? Can’t take the heat, old man?”

It’s a jibe; they both know she’s just trying to get a rise out of him because four years is hardly a significant age difference at their age. Maybe it’s the desire burning in his veins, maybe it’s the fact that he’s still hurt, if not angry, about the fact that she _vanished_ into thin air, but whatever it is makes him clamber to his feet with significantly less grace than he might have liked, makes him take hold of Jyn’s wrist and tug her to her feet with enough force that she’s pulled flush against him.

Her smile is something wicked now, almost feral. “Getting under your skin, am I?”

“Shut up,” Cassian growls and kisses her. She responds enthusiastically, slipping her hands under his shirt, which she managed to untuck somewhere in all of this, and grinding against him. Her fingernails dig into the backs of his shoulder blades and his cock jumps in his pants.

 _This_ is why he’s resisted everyone’s (and he means _everyone’s_ ) attempts to set him up with someone new. Not because of some bullshit about staying focused or putting the job first or not wanting to risk his heart again, but because no one can make him hard from a single touch the way Jyn Erso can.

Kay always said she would be the death of him, and maybe she will be, but this is hardly the worst way to go.

* * *

In Jyn’s estimation, it’s been two years since she’s had sex. First, she was in prison—though her abstinence had less to do with the fact that she was in prison and more to do with the fact that her cellmate wanted to kill her—and then, once she was out, she was working for the FBI and there just wasn’t time.

(At least that’s what she tells herself, because it’s better than admitting she couldn’t stop thinking about _Cassian_.)

Her vibrator is great and all, but imagining hands touching her—Cassian’s hands, slipping under her shirt, skimming the edge of her bra, brushing over her nipples with a delicacy that makes her want to scream—is nowhere near as good as the real thing.

Cassian’s hand slips under the edge of her bra (she’s forgotten how nimble his fingers are) and cups her breast gently. His thumb slides over her nipple, slowly, agonisingly, and Jyn can’t help the moan that tumbles from her lips because really, it’s been _two fucking years_.

(It’s been eight years, if she thinks about it, since she’s had really good sex, but that was her own fault, really, because she was dumb enough to try and run away from the best sex of her life.)

She bites his neck in retaliation because it’s unfair that he should be so good with his hands, that he should have her wet and trembling and on teetering on the brink after five minutes and he groans her name like a prayer. She drags her tongue over the skin, slowly, to soothe the marks of her teeth, and sets to work on his shirt buttons because he’s almost got her half naked and there are just too many _clothes._ His chest is broader than she remembers, the skinny frame of the college sociology major buried under a firm layer of muscle. They ripple under her fingers, tremble, as if he’s trying to hold himself back.

“Come on, Andor,” she murmurs against his collarbone, loving the way his pulse races under his skin, the way his breath hitches as her fingers dip under the waistband of his trousers. “Still holding out on me?”

He growls in response, pulling her shirt over her head with such ferocity that she’s surprised it doesn’t rip. His ego has always been a weak spot, and desire makes it harder for him to keep his emotions so tightly under wraps. Jyn loves goading him; the way he responds so easily, so passionately, makes her blood rush.

His hands are everywhere, pinching and teasing and skimming over her skin. Every inch of her is over-sensitised from such a long abstinence; his touch is like a live wire, burning her from the inside out and she is more than willing—eager, really—to die in the flames.

She tips her head back as his mouth moves up the juncture of her shoulder, allowing him better access to the sensitive spot under her ear that has always made her weak-kneed. She can feel his grin curling against her skin as she groans and writhes against him, but she’s not the only one affected; his erection strains against her thigh and he _bucks_ like a teenager when she grinds against it.

(She’s not the only one who’s gone a while without sex, it seems.)

The button on her jeans pops open, worked free by Cassian’s fingers, and then his hands are slipping into her panties, going down, down, down, and Jyn has to bite the inside of her lip until it bleeds to keep from screaming when his finger runs over her clit because it’s been so _long_ and his hands feel every bit as good as they did eight years ago and she’s been dreaming about an orgasm like the one she’s about to have for _years._

Still, it seems unfair, she thinks (which is a hard thing to do when Cassian’s fingertip is circling her clit and pressing in that spot that makes her mind go blank), that she should be the one having all the fun. It’s with that thought in mind that she surges forward, trapping Cassian’s arm between them and kisses him, hard, hands fluttering at the waistband of his trousers.

(She used to be so much better with buttons, used to be able to have him bared in front of her in seconds, but it’s hard to keep her hands from shaking while his fingers stroke her lazily.)

He slips a finger inside her, pushing in with excruciating slowness, and her teeth clamp down hard on his lip, so hard that he curses and she tastes blood, salt on her tongue.

“Always need to put the lady first, don’t you?” she pants against his mouth. She’s finally gotten his button free and she slips a hand into his trousers, cupping him through his briefs. He curses, bracing his free hand against the wall. She mouths her way across his jawline slowly, stubble rasping under her lips, and fastens her teeth gently around his earlobe. “It’s not a crime to come first, you know.”

There’s a string of incomprehensible Spanish spilling from his lips like a prayer or a curse, and Jyn knows she’s got him now. He’s got another finger inside her and it’s all she can do not to ride him into the fucking sunset and maybe she’ll be the one to come first after all, but she doesn’t _care_ , not when it feels so good…

The elevator shudders into motion.

Cassian pulls his hand out of her jeans like he’s been burned.

“ _Fuck_ ,” Jyn hisses, stepping back. She drags a hand roughly through her hair, which has all but fallen out of its elastic under the machinations of Cassian’s hands. From the stormy look on his face, there are about a dozen curses on the tip of his tongue too, and it isn’t _fair_ she thinks because he’s so hard and she’s so deliciously wet and all she wants him to do is fuck her into the floor until she can’t remember her own name.

“Shit.” It occurs to her, in a sudden stab of panic, that the doors are going to be opening any second and there are going to be people and she looks like she’s been debauched. (The tragedy is that she hasn’t been.) She pulls frantically at her clothes, tries to tug her hair back into some semblance of order. Cassian watches her silently, and she can’t tell if he’s trying not to laugh or cry. She probably looks funny, caring about all this stuff when she’s been notoriously nonchalant all her life, but she works here now and so does he and they have to try and have some semblance of professionalism.

There are going to be _people_ outside those doors, possibly people that they know, and there’s no way she’s going to let them catch her with her jeans around her ankles.

“Cassian,” she hisses frantically, as they slip past the fifth floor. He turns to her, eyes still burning with desire, and if he keeps looking at her like that, she’s going to jump him again and then they’re going to be in a different kind of trouble altogether. “Your _trousers_.”

He mutters another string of curses, struggling with his belt buckle. “You—” He closes his eyes, takes a deep breath, tries again. “This isn’t finished.”

Jyn swallows. “No,” she agrees quietly, tugging on her boots. “I meant what I said. About not running this time.”

“That’s not what I meant,” he growls, and she clenches her legs together reflexively, desperately trying to forget the feeling of his fingers inside her.

“Yeah. Right. That too.”

“You have a car?”

She nods, throat dry.

“Follow me to my place.”

She’s forgotten that he used to get like this, that he used to boss people around. He was so much kinder in college, patient and world-weary; this job has made him harder, more confident. He’s used to being in command now.

“Yeah. Okay.”

Maybe this is a good thing, she thinks to herself as the final floors tick down— _4, 3, 2_. Her whole body is strung taught, quivering with anticipation, remembering the things Cassian used to do with his _tongue_ , and he’s probably gotten so much better over the last eight years.

The chime dings, so sharp that Jyn, nerves already raw, jumps about a foot in the air as the doors open.

Leia Skywalker is on the other side, arms folded across her chest like it’s somehow _their_ fault she had to spend three hours out of her afternoon trying to get the elevator fixed. Her eyebrows climb when she sees them and it’s probably because they’re both a mess and the air between them stinks of sex and desire and Cassian’s _looking_ at her in a way that makes her want to burst into flames, but she doesn’t really care about any of that because behind Leia is _Bodhi_ , staring at his shoes with that guilty look on his face.

It occurs to her suddenly that maybe this wasn’t an accident after all.

“Sorry about all that,” Leia says crisply, because even if she’s made deductions about what they were up to she’s a professional, determined to prove to all the old white men that at twenty-four she deserves to be here on her own merit and not because Director Kenobi is the closest thing she has to a father. “There was some kind of electronic glitch—it thought the stop button had been pressed.”

“And it took you _three hours_ to figure that out?” Cassian snaps. His tone is sharp, like a whip crack, though Jyn thinks that has more to do with his frustration than actual anger. Bodhi, though—Bodhi starts like he did when Jyn caught him trying to hack the Pentagon when they were eighteen, and if Jyn didn’t think something was going on before, she does now.

Leia glares at him. “Most elevator problems are not related to code glitches, okay?” she retorts. “We had to make sure it wasn’t a hack, too, make sure there wasn’t a threat to the Bureau before we did anything.”

There’s a flush spreading across Bodhi’s cheeks and his eyes skitter nervously over the floor tiles. It wasn’t a threat to the Bureau, but it was a hack, Jyn’s sure of it, a hack by a very skilled Bureau employee who happens to have a vested personal stake in the lives of both parties in said elevator.

She was in his office on the tenth floor before she met Cassian in the elevator—she stopped in to say hi on her way down from Obi-Wan’s office. He _knew_ she was here, and his office has a view of the elevator, so he must have seen Cassian get on and then her…

He planned this. He fucking _engineered_ this.

Jyn isn’t sure if she wants to punch him or kiss him. Either way, they’re going to have a talk about matchmaking later, because while it might have been effective, trapping them in an elevator for three hours can’t be the best way to accomplish his goal.

 _Sorry_ , he mouths.

He’s not, and she knows it from the smug grin that he can’t help. He’s going to be lording this over her for ages, because hasn’t he been telling her for the last two years that she should talk to Cassian, that Cassian’s cubicle is visible from Bodhi’s office and it’s a wonder they haven’t run into each other already?

She’ll text him later, yell at him next time she’s over at his place, maybe, though they both know she won’t really mean it, but right now Cassian is muttering excuses and marching off to parking garage, so she throws Bodhi a glare over her shoulder and hurries after him.

* * *

Cassian wakes the next morning to the smell of coffee and the sound of arguing.

“I figured you were gone for good. You should have stayed away. He was finally getting over you.”

“It wasn’t like that.”

“I find that answer vague and unconvincing.”

_Kay._

Cassian should never have given him keys.

Then again, it stopped him from picking the lock and it’s been really useful when Cassian forgets to buy groceries, which is frequently.

They’re in the kitchen, facing one another like a Mexican standoff. Jyn is wearing one of Cassian’s shirts, an old UCLA shirt that barely clears her knees. There’s a cup of coffee in her hand. Kay is in the doorway, arms folded across his chest. Predictably, there is a bag of groceries on the counter beside him.

“You’re no good for him. He was _wrecked_ when you left, even though the probability that you would cut and run was more than 60%, and I won’t let you do that to him again.”

“Kay,” Cassian says wearily. He slips a hand under Jyn’s shirt, cupping her hip, and she leans against him with a soft hum. “It’s fine.”

“It’s not,” Kay huffs indignantly. “You’re emotionally compromised, Cassian. You aren’t thinking clearly, so it’s no surprise you can’t see what this girl is doing to you—”

“What happened last time wasn’t Jyn’s fault.”

“Some of it was,” she mutters, but she’s smiling and this, having her here in his arms again, smelling like sweat and sex and _Jyn_ almost makes the last eight years worth it.

“I find that hard to believe—”

“There were circumstances beyond her control.”

Kay snorts. “Really.”

Jyn smirks. “Yeah. I’d tell you, but it’s classified.”

Kay’s mouth drops open and Cassian can’t help the smile that tugs at the corner of his mouth. “Well,” he blusters after a minute. “We’ll see about this.”

“We will,” Jyn retorts, jutting her chin out in that stubborn way Cassian forgot he loves. She still always needs to get the last word, it seems, which he’s always found pointless because Kay _always_ has a come back, but also hopelessly adorable. “I’m not planning on going anywhere.”

And that, Cassian thinks to himself, _almost_ makes up for his pointless two-day stakeout. He’s still going to rip Solo a new one, but maybe less violently.

_._

_._

_._

 

_if you’re ready, i’ll be waiting_

_heart is open_

_come find me_

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> This gift has spawned about a million ideas for future one-shots/stories in this series so stay tuned for more! :)


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